Billingham began taking photographs in 1990. His tools were a grainy Instamatic from Littlewoods and some out-of-date film from his local chemist. Six years later his gritty, claustrophobic shots of his family in their Stourbridge council flat - alcoholic father Ray, overweight mother Liz, troubled brother Jason - were picked up by the dealer Anthony Reynolds and made into a book, Ray's a Laugh, that made the artist's name.

Shows followed at the Barbican, New York's MoMA and, inevitably, Sensation in 1997. He made the Turner shortlist in 2001. Five years ago he said he did not want to take any more photos; three years ago he took up drawing. Yet since then he has made videos featuring Ray and Jason, and has snapped the wasteland around his West Midlands town - hardly a radical departure. His most recent photographs are of the Cephalonian landscape. It remains to be seen whether fans of Ray's a Laugh - the art-world equivalent of the TV viewers who lap up the Osbornes in fascinated horror - will accept them with the same enthusiasm.